Living in the same house after divorce

[Anonymous]

Why did you divorce? Is it just to date other people formally? Why was the hurry to divorce now if you are ok with living as roommates. You could have just waited 7 years to divorce formally without the complication of continuing to live together under one roof while divorced.

[Anonymous]

I've posted on this thread several times, and keep coming back to it, because I find it so fascinating! I divorced 4 years ago - and a HUGE part of it was that I could not stand living with XH - his energy, constant presence in the house, no alone time for me, the incessant talking, the co-parenting while in the same house, etc., the negotiation of scheduling and time, and chores, etc.

That said, we are very amicably co-parenting, with minimal conflict and frequent communication - incl. in-person.

This thread highlights that marriages are all different as are divorces.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand why you’d divorce and still want to live in the same house, none of the fun parts of marriage, all of the less fun parts, plus you’d have to see or at least be aware that your ex was or wasn’t with someone else. Even if you don’t care about the sex, your ex will probably be doing some of the things they did with you or doing some of the things they always wanted to do with you but for whatever reason didn’t happen. Think about that for a bit. Do you really want to see your ex drive off for a date to a baseball game with someone new? It’s not like you won’t know or suspect what they are up to.. and if you didn’t care then why the “no introducing kids to partners” rule.. which btw, you can’t enforce anyway, whoever has the legal right to be in the home can bring home whoever they’d like, or at least adults can.
I also don’t understand why as an adult you’d want to live in a house where you had rules against doing healthy adult things, one of the best parts of being an adult is you can live pretty much how you want to. I’d not take kindly to another adult telling me who I can date, sleep with, when I can go out, when they need me home and have no emotional and physical relationship with that person.
Think too about your kids. They are what, eleven? Soon they will be discovering romantic relationships, I wonder if your arrangement will make you less able to appropriately guide them on this path because you yourself are miserable or sad or lonely. We have a teenager. She had one almost boyfriend who didn’t treat her well, only she couldn’t see it. She had another boyfriend who was fine for a time and then wasn’t largely due to his family. Now she’s got another boyfriend who seems great from a family that shares our core values. All of these have involved lots of conversations over years. It isn’t just about the physical aspects of dating but the emotional ones too, and sometimes that can be the much harder discussion, kid knows how babies happen, doesn’t want one, so I’m not really worried about it. I am finding I care far more about the emotional aspects of her dating life then I ever thought I would. You won’t be able to be there for them in a healthy way unless you yourself are healthy. This living situation won’t be doing that for you, skulking around looking for sex, associating with people who have their own mental health issues because no way would a healthy person date you in this situation that sort of thing.

All in all, I wouldn’t do this. Either work on the marriage or divorce and physically separate. I vote for working on the marriage, you two like each other enough to want to remain in the same house, you can find your way back if you put the effort that would go into new people back into each other. Figure out what you need to be happy, I’m wondering if you two are divorcing because you don’t like your day to day and that can change. All a divorce would let you do is date new people but you won’t get anybody worth having if you two still live together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are filling for divorce and it will be amicable. However for financial reasons and for our kids as well we have decided to still live in the same house. I will be sleeping in a room downstairs and DW in a room upstairs. And we further both agree we will have separate lives outside the home and will not introduce our new partners to our kids. Our kids turn 18 in 7 years and at that point we have decided that we will sell the house and go our separate ways.

I know this is a very unusual arrangement and want to hears folks’ experience, knowledge, opinion about such an arrangement.

7 years?

Nuts.

Why get divorced now at all?

[Anonymous]

Why one of you is freeloading for the free childcare, scheduling, cooking and cleaning?

OP or OPs wife?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I don’t understand why you’d divorce and still want to live in the same house, none of the fun parts of marriage, all of the less fun parts, plus you’d have to see or at least be aware that your ex was or wasn’t with someone else. Even if you don’t care about the sex, your ex will probably be doing some of the things they did with you or doing some of the things they always wanted to do with you but for whatever reason didn’t happen. Think about that for a bit. Do you really want to see your ex drive off for a date to a baseball game with someone new? It’s not like you won’t know or suspect what they are up to.. and if you didn’t care then why the “no introducing kids to partners” rule.. which btw, you can’t enforce anyway, whoever has the legal right to be in the home can bring home whoever they’d like, or at least adults can.
I also don’t understand why as an adult you’d want to live in a house where you had rules against doing healthy adult things, one of the best parts of being an adult is you can live pretty much how you want to. I’d not take kindly to another adult telling me who I can date, sleep with, when I can go out, when they need me home and have no emotional and physical relationship with that person.
Think too about your kids. They are what, eleven? Soon they will be discovering romantic relationships, I wonder if your arrangement will make you less able to appropriately guide them on this path because you yourself are miserable or sad or lonely. We have a teenager. She had one almost boyfriend who didn’t treat her well, only she couldn’t see it. She had another boyfriend who was fine for a time and then wasn’t largely due to his family. Now she’s got another boyfriend who seems great from a family that shares our core values. All of these have involved lots of conversations over years. It isn’t just about the physical aspects of dating but the emotional ones too, and sometimes that can be the much harder discussion, kid knows how babies happen, doesn’t want one, so I’m not really worried about it. I am finding I care far more about the emotional aspects of her dating life then I ever thought I would. You won’t be able to be there for them in a healthy way unless you yourself are healthy. This living situation won’t be doing that for you, skulking around looking for sex, associating with people who have their own mental health issues because no way would a healthy person date you in this situation that sort of thing.

All in all, I wouldn’t do this. Either work on the marriage or divorce and physically separate. I vote for working on the marriage, you two like each other enough to want to remain in the same house, you can find your way back if you put the effort that would go into new people back into each other. Figure out what you need to be happy, I’m wondering if you two are divorcing because you don’t like your day to day and that can change. All a divorce would let you do is date new people but you won’t get anybody worth having if you two still live together.

I am the PP who lived in the same house for two years post divorce. I'll provide some input about your post.

1. When you are divorced, no one cares what the other person is doing. It's over. No one advertises they are going to meet so and so. That person just leaves the house. They don't get into details of where they are going.

2. This does not model bad relationships for kids. They are being honest that their marriage is not ideal so they are divorced. This is better than pretending to be happy and staying in the marriage. It is better for the kids for their lives to be less disrupted. Kids understand more than you think. Before we told them we divorced, they asked if we would still live in the same house after they go to college. They were 6 and 9 when they asked this.

3. Why do you assume everyone wants a new partner? I will never remarry. Never. I have kids to raise. That's it. My ex feels the same. We can't be married. We can't be socially, financially or sexually connected. We have kids--we have to raise them. It's logical.

You could not handle divorce this way. That does not mean the OP can't.

It is obvious to me they want to divorce but not disrupt their kids lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I don’t understand why you’d divorce and still want to live in the same house, none of the fun parts of marriage, all of the less fun parts, plus you’d have to see or at least be aware that your ex was or wasn’t with someone else. Even if you don’t care about the sex, your ex will probably be doing some of the things they did with you or doing some of the things they always wanted to do with you but for whatever reason didn’t happen. Think about that for a bit. Do you really want to see your ex drive off for a date to a baseball game with someone new? It’s not like you won’t know or suspect what they are up to.. and if you didn’t care then why the “no introducing kids to partners” rule.. which btw, you can’t enforce anyway, whoever has the legal right to be in the home can bring home whoever they’d like, or at least adults can.
I also don’t understand why as an adult you’d want to live in a house where you had rules against doing healthy adult things, one of the best parts of being an adult is you can live pretty much how you want to. I’d not take kindly to another adult telling me who I can date, sleep with, when I can go out, when they need me home and have no emotional and physical relationship with that person.
Think too about your kids. They are what, eleven? Soon they will be discovering romantic relationships, I wonder if your arrangement will make you less able to appropriately guide them on this path because you yourself are miserable or sad or lonely. We have a teenager. She had one almost boyfriend who didn’t treat her well, only she couldn’t see it. She had another boyfriend who was fine for a time and then wasn’t largely due to his family. Now she’s got another boyfriend who seems great from a family that shares our core values. All of these have involved lots of conversations over years. It isn’t just about the physical aspects of dating but the emotional ones too, and sometimes that can be the much harder discussion, kid knows how babies happen, doesn’t want one, so I’m not really worried about it. I am finding I care far more about the emotional aspects of her dating life then I ever thought I would. You won’t be able to be there for them in a healthy way unless you yourself are healthy. This living situation won’t be doing that for you, skulking around looking for sex, associating with people who have their own mental health issues because no way would a healthy person date you in this situation that sort of thing.

All in all, I wouldn’t do this. Either work on the marriage or divorce and physically separate. I vote for working on the marriage, you two like each other enough to want to remain in the same house, you can find your way back if you put the effort that would go into new people back into each other. Figure out what you need to be happy, I’m wondering if you two are divorcing because you don’t like your day to day and that can change. All a divorce would let you do is date new people but you won’t get anybody worth having if you two still live together.

I am the PP who lived in the same house for two years post divorce. I'll provide some input about your post.

1. When you are divorced, no one cares what the other person is doing. It's over. No one advertises they are going to meet so and so. That person just leaves the house. They don't get into details of where they are going.

2. This does not model bad relationships for kids. They are being honest that their marriage is not ideal so they are divorced. This is better than pretending to be happy and staying in the marriage. It is better for the kids for their lives to be less disrupted. Kids understand more than you think. Before we told them we divorced, they asked if we would still live in the same house after they go to college. They were 6 and 9 when they asked this.

3. Why do you assume everyone wants a new partner? I will never remarry. Never. I have kids to raise. That's it. My ex feels the same. We can't be married. We can't be socially, financially or sexually connected. We have kids--we have to raise them. It's logical.

You could not handle divorce this way. That does not mean the OP can't.

It is obvious to me they want to divorce but not disrupt their kids lives.

Logistically - how did you handle kid schedule and parenting duties. chores, etc? Vacations? Was it all negotiated during the divorce proceedings? Decisions about maintenance / decorating in shared spaces? Groceries and cooking? Cleaning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I don’t understand why you’d divorce and still want to live in the same house, none of the fun parts of marriage, all of the less fun parts, plus you’d have to see or at least be aware that your ex was or wasn’t with someone else. Even if you don’t care about the sex, your ex will probably be doing some of the things they did with you or doing some of the things they always wanted to do with you but for whatever reason didn’t happen. Think about that for a bit. Do you really want to see your ex drive off for a date to a baseball game with someone new? It’s not like you won’t know or suspect what they are up to.. and if you didn’t care then why the “no introducing kids to partners” rule.. which btw, you can’t enforce anyway, whoever has the legal right to be in the home can bring home whoever they’d like, or at least adults can.
I also don’t understand why as an adult you’d want to live in a house where you had rules against doing healthy adult things, one of the best parts of being an adult is you can live pretty much how you want to. I’d not take kindly to another adult telling me who I can date, sleep with, when I can go out, when they need me home and have no emotional and physical relationship with that person.
Think too about your kids. They are what, eleven? Soon they will be discovering romantic relationships, I wonder if your arrangement will make you less able to appropriately guide them on this path because you yourself are miserable or sad or lonely. We have a teenager. She had one almost boyfriend who didn’t treat her well, only she couldn’t see it. She had another boyfriend who was fine for a time and then wasn’t largely due to his family. Now she’s got another boyfriend who seems great from a family that shares our core values. All of these have involved lots of conversations over years. It isn’t just about the physical aspects of dating but the emotional ones too, and sometimes that can be the much harder discussion, kid knows how babies happen, doesn’t want one, so I’m not really worried about it. I am finding I care far more about the emotional aspects of her dating life then I ever thought I would. You won’t be able to be there for them in a healthy way unless you yourself are healthy. This living situation won’t be doing that for you, skulking around looking for sex, associating with people who have their own mental health issues because no way would a healthy person date you in this situation that sort of thing.

All in all, I wouldn’t do this. Either work on the marriage or divorce and physically separate. I vote for working on the marriage, you two like each other enough to want to remain in the same house, you can find your way back if you put the effort that would go into new people back into each other. Figure out what you need to be happy, I’m wondering if you two are divorcing because you don’t like your day to day and that can change. All a divorce would let you do is date new people but you won’t get anybody worth having if you two still live together.

I am the PP who lived in the same house for two years post divorce. I'll provide some input about your post.

1. When you are divorced, no one cares what the other person is doing. It's over. No one advertises they are going to meet so and so. That person just leaves the house. They don't get into details of where they are going.

2. This does not model bad relationships for kids. They are being honest that their marriage is not ideal so they are divorced. This is better than pretending to be happy and staying in the marriage. It is better for the kids for their lives to be less disrupted. Kids understand more than you think. Before we told them we divorced, they asked if we would still live in the same house after they go to college. They were 6 and 9 when they asked this.

3. Why do you assume everyone wants a new partner? I will never remarry. Never. I have kids to raise. That's it. My ex feels the same. We can't be married. We can't be socially, financially or sexually connected. We have kids--we have to raise them. It's logical.

You could not handle divorce this way. That does not mean the OP can't.

It is obvious to me they want to divorce but not disrupt their kids lives.

Logistically - how did you handle kid schedule and parenting duties. chores, etc? Vacations? Was it all negotiated during the divorce proceedings? Decisions about maintenance / decorating in shared spaces? Groceries and cooking? Cleaning?

Far easier than living in separate houses I’ll tell you that. We each had kids on specific days. We both cleaned. I cleaned more but don’t care. We bought her own groceries and did our own chores. We did not do any of this is part of our divorce agreement because there’s no reason to do that; it’s not enforceable. We never ate together. We always cooked separately and we bought our own groceries. We fed the kids on our days. Neither of us decorate and shared spaces. It was the same. Christmas decorations are always the same every year and absolutely nothing changed. The same birthday banner literally is hung up every year for the last 12 years. Nothing changed. Vacation time was written into the agreement, but we barely even looked at the agreement. We just split the time as we needed when we went on vacation. Informed each other of dates when each of us was traveling with the kids.

House was very large. We barely spoke. It was so much easier than having two houses that we both have now. Now we have to talk all the time because of kid logistics but when we shared the house and we’re divorced, we didn’t speak at all because everything related to the kids was in the house and we did not have to switch them and it lessened our communication.